Albert Derolez (8 August 1934 – 11 July 2026) was a Belgian librarian and medievalist, particularly known as an expert on the 12th-century encyclopaedia Liber Floridus.
Life and career From 1962 Derolez was employed by Ghent University Library, where he catalogued and inventorised the medieval manuscripts. He completed a doctorate in 1970 with a thesis on the Liber Floridus, and in subsequent decades was recognised as the leading expert on that text.
While continuing to work as a librarian in Ghent, Derolez also lectured on codicology and palaeography at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles, as well as being a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and the Rare Book School, where he held the Kenneth and Shirley Rendell Chair in Manuscript Studies. He was a consultant on the digital cataloguing of the manuscripts in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.
In 2018 a Festschrift was published in his honour with the title Librorum studiosus: Miscellanea palaeographica et codicologica Albert Derolez dicata, edited by Lucien Reynhout and Benjamin Victor. He died on 11 July 2026, at the age of 91.
Works Derolez had over 400 publications to his name."The Writings of Albert Derolez", in Archaeology of the Manuscript Book in the Italian Renaissance, 2018, pp. 10–63 Among them are: Lamberti S. Audomari Canonici Liber Floridus: Codex Autographus Bibliothecae Universitatis Gandavensis, 1968 The Library of Raphael de Marcatellis, Abbot of St. Bavon's, Ghent, 1437-1508, 1979 Guibert of Gembloux, Epistolae, 1988–1989 with C. Coppens and H. Heymans, Codex Eyckensis: An Insular Gospel Book from the Abbey of Aldeneik, 1994 The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer, 1998 "The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard of Bingen's Writings", in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art, edited by Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, 1998 The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, 2003Reviewed by Consuelo W. Dutschke in Speculum, 81/1 (2006), pp. 171–172. ""The Script Reform of Petrarch: An Illusion?" in Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance, edited by John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld, 2006 The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript, Ghent University Library, MS 92, 2014Reviewed by Scott G. Bruce in Mediaevistik, 29 (2016), pp. 399–400; by Nathalie Bouloux in Médiévales, 77 (2019), pp. 188–192. with Hendrik Defoort and Frank Vanlangenhove, Medieval Manuscripts: Ghent University Library, 2017 Liber Floridus: De oudste geïllustreerde encyclopedie, 2025
References